Do you Teach Touch & Go's?

If the Concord can do it on a wet runway. Starts at :35


Or a 747.

 
I did T&G practice extensively with my instructor and after solo. First, we did full stop landings only, and as I got more competent, we did T&G landings to get in more practice in the available time. I still do them today. We do have 5000 feet of runway, however at KVGC. And you do have to remember to reconfigure prior to rotation. But that's just part of good technique. I don't consider this a hazardous maneuver with sufficient runway. On a 2600 foot runway different answer.
 
I did not teach touch and goes as a maneuver. I taught procedures. I used T&Gs to teach about aircraft control and dividing attention. Keep it on the center line, don't let the nose wheel touch, set flaps, trim, mixture, throttle up, airspeed all while keeping center line and the nose wheel off the ground.

Also stops the idea that once all wheels are on the ground the flight is over.

This can be nit picked to death but basically I had students learning about aircraft control. And there were exceptions.
 
Personally, I practice touch and goes in my bonanza all the time.

In the way back machine, my instructor taught me touch and goes in the rental 150 as a student pilot. I would expect a competent pilot at any level could do a touch and go. Now, depending on the plane it might be prudent but this is the internet and we will depart that. But either a 152 or 172 should be easy.
 
I think that we can, and have, all agreed that the cost of getting the PPL is a major entry burden to new pilots. As other have pointed out, that full-stop and taxi back adds up over the training period. Not to say the reflection time and pause in training is not beneficial but is it as beneficial as another look at the runway and all the skills learned through repetition to land well?

If getting the same amount of training over 40-45 hours was added to by another .3 you're really looking at another $2.5-3K for a license. At minimum wage here in MD for a young person that's another 295-300 hours of working to be able to afford that PPL and that's IF people do the license in 40-45 hours which seems increasingly rare.

In 1984 I started flying at 3FK, Frankling Flying field in Indiana. 2400x35 of suspicious pavement in Tomahawks. After solo at 10-ish hours I was out doing T&Gs solo there and at other similar strips. Perhaps not elegantly, and certainly sucking the seat cushion up some, but I was learning.

Fast forward to 2018 as the time money curves finally intersected again and I was went back to finish the private @ FDK. 5200x100 foot runway and we flew T&Gs with an instructor but you couldn't do them, along with frankly absurd wind limitations, solo. With the time from 1984 (and having accumulated a fair amount of SA in my NFO time) I was able to finish the private in minimal flight time and 4 months over the winter but I saw students flying the same 2-3 times a week as I did as their training stretched out. Mandatory phase checks, no T&Gs, wind limits, X/C wx limits. All the adds up as a cost and time burden.

Have we simply been driven to become too risk adverse? Flying can be a little dangerous (news flash) but not as dangerous as many things. We learn to stretch our skills through doing things over and over again and making small tweaks to improve both with an instructor in the plane and without.

T&G's dangerous? If you can't touch down on a standard airport runway, apply power, select flaps up, carb heat off (if needed) rotate and fly away (and put the gear up if needed) then I think perhaps you might want to consider some more time flying with or without an instructor. Do you need to do a T&G every time? Nope, in fact I routinely stop and taxi back after an instrument approach to set things up again and reorient myself. T&Gs are simply another flight maneuver in our range of things we do as Aviators.

I'm lucky. Still working but I have the time/money to fly mostly as I'd like but many many folks, especially the young ones coming into Aviation, do not. When I read people propose updates to the PPL standards like "we should have to do spins again", "We should mandate taildragger or glider time" or "PPL students need at least 10 hours of instrument" it just adds time/expense and may not significantly add to safety but certainly will keep many people from joining our ranks.

Certainly, the NTSB could give us stats on how many mishaps occur on a T&G evolution. Would they be able to give us how many T&Gs are done safely to come up with a ratio? As a former USN safety officer I can say with authority that safety is not our primary mission. Flying as safely as we can within our, and our equipments, limitations is the goal. If we want to be as safe as possible we would sit in a lawn chair and look at the plane in the hangar.

Just my 2 cents. Sorry for the thread drift.

Well, except with those 5,000 words you failed to include the stop-n-go option which adds very little to the cost of training. Or, better yet, might actually save money if you don't have renter's insurance to cover your touch-n-go incident.
 
Land & taxi back is definitely safer especially on short runways, but stop & go is riskier than touch & go.

W...
T...
and
F...
????

Are you referring to short runways only? (hint, I hope so!)
 
Oh, and when practicing stop-n-goes I'm almost always down and stopped before the 1000' blocks...in a 182. Practicing landing where you want to...and NEED to...is far more important than being hair triggered to go around IMO...especially since 99% of the time, when you go around, you'll do so before your wheels ever touch the ground.

EDIT: Not to brag but...speaking of landing WHERE you want/need to, check out the vid I posted last week of my FIRST landing at my airstrip.

https://www.pilotsofamerica.com/community/threads/virginal-experience.119736/

i.e. if you wait until your wheels are on the ground before deciding that you don't have enough runway left, then you're an idiot. Sure, a deer could run out in front of you once on the ground and it's important to know how to do it but doing it as an excuse to save money is just ludicrous.

And, you know, I'm quite capable of, and proficient at, going around (and they are indeed important to practice) but...if my wheels are on the ground and a deer runs out in front on me, I'm confident that I'd decide that what is about to happen is between that deer and my insurance company. I love my plane but, if my ass isn't on the line, there are many more out there...
 
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I used to do T&G's in the 172, but I won't in the bonanza. Getting the airplane reconfigured eats lots of runway, and there is always a chance of grabbing the gear vs the flaps.
 
Well, except with those 5,000 words you failed to include the stop-n-go option which adds very little to the cost of training. Or, better yet, might actually save money if you don't have renter's insurance to cover your touch-n-go incident.

Sure, if the runway is long enough no reason not to. I stand by T&G is an option too.

Sorry I made you read too much.
 
I would have said (not that I teach them, I'm not a CFI-even informally... :) ) "Yes". But after reading Zeldman's description ("Keep it on the center line, don't let the nose wheel touch, set flaps, trim, mixture, throttle up, airspeed all while keeping center line and the nose wheel off the ground."), I do something in between. I land and let the plane slow, put the nose wheel down, then reconfigure (quick glance to make sure flaps are retracting symmetrically) then throttle up and go. I typically get down to around 35-40 KIAS before the go. This is on a 6,000 runway. So I guess this is a slow-n-go.
 
When I learned, the rule at our school was no solo T&G's. They were regularly done with an instructor. This turned out to bite me. Unbeknownst to me, my instructor helped on the go-around by bringing the flaps to 10. When the examiner had me do a t&g, I didn't retract them which causes bizarre things in a 152 (it wants to come up on the nose wheel). I got it in the air but it was ugly. After we landed the examiner suggested go out and practice my t&g's some. I told him that students weren't allowed to do them solo. He said that's for student pilots, you've got your private now. That was the first point where I knew I had passed.
 
When I learned, the rule at our school was no solo T&G's. They were regularly done with an instructor. This turned out to bite me. Unbeknownst to me, my instructor helped on the go-around by bringing the flaps to 10. When the examiner had me do a t&g, I didn't retract them which causes bizarre things in a 152 (it wants to come up on the nose wheel). I got it in the air but it was ugly. After we landed the examiner suggested go out and practice my t&g's some. I told him that students weren't allowed to do them solo. He said that's for student pilots, you've got your private now. That was the first point where I knew I had passed.
Why did he have you do a touch and go in the first place?
 
I learned at a 2500 foot strip with 500 foot displaced threshold that prohibited the TNG, however we could do a full stop and taxi back very quickly so it did not add a lot of time to the lesson. As a result of this I did not do many at all and now I just don't do them. I will do go arounds on a semi regular basis just to keep those skills sharp. I plan on getting my CFI eventually and we will see what happens then.
 
When I learned, the rule at our school was no solo T&G's. They were regularly done with an instructor. This turned out to bite me. Unbeknownst to me, my instructor helped on the go-around by bringing the flaps to 10. When the examiner had me do a t&g, I didn't retract them which causes bizarre things in a 152 (it wants to come up on the nose wheel). I got it in the air but it was ugly. After we landed the examiner suggested go out and practice my t&g's some. I told him that students weren't allowed to do them solo. He said that's for student pilots, you've got your private now. That was the first point where I knew I had passed.

My DPE asked me to do a soft field T&G (w/o letting nose wheel touch) and I climbed out with full flaps 172S. It was ugly and I'd never done that before. Decided to do a discontinuance. When I went back to re-test the landings, he asked for the same thing and I said I wanted to do a soft field then taxi back since he could not tell me when I could retract the flaps from 30 to 10 between touch down and lift off. He had previously told me I could never ever touch the flaps lever on the runway (only after reaching taxi way). Well he ended up failing me on landings when my short field ended with a wing lift after touchdown. Two crosswind CFI lessons later, I re-re-tested with another DPE and it was like clockwork. I learned alot from that experience, and it only cost me an additional 0.4 AMU (aviation monetary unit).
 
My DPE asked me to do a soft field T&G (w/o letting nose wheel touch) and I climbed out with full flaps 172S. It was ugly and I'd never done that before. Decided to do a discontinuance. When I went back to re-test the landings, he asked for the same thing and I said I wanted to do a soft field then taxi back since he could not tell me when I could retract the flaps from 30 to 10 between touch down and lift off. He had previously told me I could never ever touch the flaps lever on the runway (only after reaching taxi way). Well he ended up failing me on landings when my short field ended with a wing lift after touchdown. Two crosswind CFI lessons later, I re-re-tested with another DPE and it was like clockwork. I learned alot from that experience, and it only cost me an additional 0.4 AMU (aviation monetary unit).
The first DPE is crocked. His "technique" is contrary to the instructions from the manufacturer and common sense. If you are rejecting the landing (or doing a T&G) you need to get to flaps 10 immediately. In fact, the reason your plane only has 30 degrees of flaps is it takes too long to retract from 40.
 
DPEs should not be asking for touch and goes during checkrides. We really need to stop giving business to rogue examiners.

Considering how difficult it is to become a DPE at all, I really don't get it.
 
During my PPL exam every single one was a T&G except for return home. Examiner wanted to waste 0 time.
 
Not a CFI but I wouldn't hesitate to incorporate T&G's in training. If a pilot is proficient then there isn't anything inherently dangerous about T&G's. I watched Alaskan perform several T&G's in MD-80's at KBOI in the early 90's. Full stop landings make sense for tailwheels just because the hard part starts on rollout. If someone is worried about reconfiguration for T/O, what are they going to do if they have to go around on short final or worse after touchdown?

Notwithstanding 3-pt landings where you land with a minimum airspeed and would need to transition from a tail low to a tail high position for takeoff, it is actually easier and makes more sense to do a touch-and-go wheel-landing in a tailwheel. You never have to transition from tail high to tail low or vice versa which is one of the critical points of instability in the takeoff and landing. During a takeoff you are transitioning from highly authoritative tail-wheel assisted steering in the tail low position, to low authority control surface steering as you lift the nose at a low airspeed until you reach closer to flying airspeed where the control surface steering becomes has a high degree of authority; if you consider a wheel landing is really just a take off in reverse, you have the same unstable, low control authority moment as you allow your airspeed to decay in order to prevent the plane from flying again as you lower the tail to plant the tailwheel on the ground and provide you steering authority via it.
 
I don't do T&G's in my complex aircraft. A lot to do quickly to reconfigure the aircraft from landing to taking off, and if not done right the aircraft undergoes the mother of all pitch up motions that can be difficult to control, especially while swinging the Johnson bar to retract the gear. [...]

Frankly, reading this gives me the impression that you definitely need to practice t&g. What if you have to go around after touching down? Then you’re faced with a high stress situation and a maneuver you are not comfortable with!

I also don’t see why there should be more going on in our Mooneys than is a typical trainer during the actual t&g!? The prop stays full forward and you can take your time to bring the gear back up. Adjusting the trim is therefore the only thing that needs immediate adjusting, but this is also the case in a Piper Cherokee or a Cessna 172.
 
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It’s a tool that when used properly is valuable. If used improperly it’s at the minimum negative learning and potentially dangerous. Kinda sums up Aviation in general. So yes. I like to play grab ass with the runway.
 
On my check ride I asked my DPE about touch and go’s, he said he didn’t like them. I assume he meant for the check ride.
 
Frankly, reading this gives me the impression that you definitely need to practice t&g. What if you have to go around after touching down? Then you’re faced with a high stress situation and a maneuver you are not comfortable with!

I really can't see a situation where I'm wheels down and rolling and I need to put in the power. Perhaps landing in the evening at a rural airstrip where fauna could come in from the surroundings, but that really isn't my mission. If I've done my due diligence in the landing pattern I've looked over the landing surface and its safe to land. Moreover, there are lots of situations where staying on the ground could result in a pranged airplane, but trying to take off again could be far worse. I recall a TBM (you know the "M" stands for Mooney, right?) that had a prop strike after a bounce. He put the power in to do the go-around and died. Putting the power in can make an already bad situation that much dangerous. While I'm always prepared for a go around on short final, I prefer to focus my efforts on placing the airplane where I want it in the minimum distance.

I also don’t see why there should be more going on in our Mooneys than is a typical trainer during the actual t&g!? The prop stays full forward and you can take your time to bring the gear back up. Adjusting the trim is therefore the only thing that needs immediate adjusting, but this is also the case in a Piper Cherokee or a Cessna 172.

This is outright nonsense. In my Cherokee you just put in the power and go. I do that in the Mooney and I'm courting a departure stall. I HAVE to swing the bar as soon as practicable, otherwise the forces involved quickly become overwhelming as the aircraft accelerates. So I'm trying to keep the nose down while doing that, fine. Add one more distraction into the mix, perhaps what caused me to bolt in the first place, and it gets honestly quite dangerous. Moreover, I have to pull out the flaps and re-trim the aircraft, things I never had to do in a trainer. Oh yeah, they have trim too, but aren't anywhere near as sensitive to it. So to do the T&G i have to re-trim and suck up the flaps. While rolling at relatively high energy on the ground. Sounds like a darn good way to break something.

And why do it? To add a skill that you aren't ever going to use if you do your due diligence? T&Gs don't teach you how to do go arounds, they teach you to do T&Gs. People have geared up airplanes doing T&Gs. People have died too.
 
Dangerous for some. Not for others. There is nothing special about the Mooney that makes it this impossible life-threatening task that you make it out to be. That being said...

Insert obligatory Clint Eastwood quote here.
 
My DPE asked me to do a soft field T&G (w/o letting nose wheel touch) and I climbed out with full flaps 172S. It was ugly and I'd never done that before. Decided to do a discontinuance. When I went back to re-test the landings, he asked for the same thing and I said I wanted to do a soft field then taxi back since he could not tell me when I could retract the flaps from 30 to 10 between touch down and lift off. He had previously told me I could never ever touch the flaps lever on the runway (only after reaching taxi way). Well he ended up failing me on landings when my short field ended with a wing lift after touchdown. Two crosswind CFI lessons later, I re-re-tested with another DPE and it was like clockwork. I learned alot from that experience, and it only cost me an additional 0.4 AMU (aviation monetary unit).
Sounds like you learned that FAA designee letters don’t necessarily correlate to knowledge or proficiency.
 
And, you know, I'm quite capable of, and proficient at, going around (and they are indeed important to practice) but...if my wheels are on the ground and a deer runs out in front on me, I'm confident that I'd decide that what is about to happen is between that deer and my insurance company. I love my plane but, if my ass isn't on the line, there are many more out there...

I fly on grass too and recently had a deer run out after I was on the ground. I couldn’t help but to swerve left a bit. I am sure that I would have ground looped a tailwheel, but my 150 handled it well enough. Another club member was not quite as lucky last year and out came the shotgun and golf cart to drag it out to the edge of the woods. The deer took a chop to the neck, but didn’t hit the aircraft otherwise.
 
Notwithstanding 3-pt landings where you land with a minimum airspeed and would need to transition from a tail low to a tail high position for takeoff, it is actually easier and makes more sense to do a touch-and-go wheel-landing in a tailwheel.

Right, definitely easier, but you really don't get the landing practice doing wheel landing T&G's so why do that? All my tailwheel training/practice was full stop landings (with the exception of practicing x-wind procedures where we would alternate wheels the length of the runway). I think most ground loops occur in the rollout so that's why I think it makes more sense to practice with full stop landings in a tailwheel...
 
W...
T...
and
F...
????

Are you referring to short runways only? (hint, I hope so!)

Depends on what your definition of short is. If short field techniques are required, then either T&G or S&G are both bad ideas.
On medium runways, by the time you come to a full stop, and then start a fresh acceleration you would eat up a lot of runway. On a T&G you never come to a stop, so less runway consumed overall.
My point is, if you are going to come to a full stop, you might as well taxi back.
 
I really can't see a situation where I'm wheels down and rolling and I need to put in the power. [...]

Well, one situation that comes to mind is that somebody touches down too fast, nose gear first, resulting in a porpoise landing what might cause a collapsed nose gear and a prop strike. Going around after the first bounce would be an easy fix in such a situation. I believe you have heard about such a mishap, right? ;) :cool: :rolleyes:

While I never touched down nose gear first, I myself also already went around several times after touching down or on very short final, when I thought that things didn’t feel right.

I think that not being able to comfortably perform such a maneuver would be an important tool missing in my box.


[...]

This is outright nonsense. In my Cherokee you just put in the power and go. I do that in the Mooney and I'm courting a departure stall. I HAVE to swing the bar as soon as practicable, otherwise the forces involved quickly become overwhelming as the aircraft accelerates. So I'm trying to keep the nose down while doing that, fine. Add one more distraction into the mix, perhaps what caused me to bolt in the first place, and it gets honestly quite dangerous. Moreover, I have to pull out the flaps and re-trim the aircraft, things I never had to do in a trainer. [...]

Not sure why you think you would risk a departure stall!? The worst case situation would be that you’re already down but then decide to still go around. Even in this situation (at least at our elevations) any M20 is powerful enough to establish a positive climb: Apply full throttle, keep the nose down to accelerate, adjust trim as needed and start to climb only once you’re going 80 mph or so. At this speed you can also still bring the gear up without excessive force. I then like to try to bring the flaps back up in multiple smaller steps since this is indeed a bit tricky with our hydraulic flaps. I fully retract them once I’m going 90 mph and then continue to accelerate to Vy of around 110 mph.

Really, the only things that need to happen immediately is the application of power and that the nose needs to stay down. Everything else can be done once the plane has been stabilized.
 
I learned to fly at a busy Class-C airport and did many training patterns at an abandoned Air Force Base 10 miles away with a 9,000' runway. We did touch-and-gos there.
 
Dangerous for some. Not for others. There is nothing special about the Mooney that makes it this impossible life-threatening task that you make it out to be. That being said...

Insert obligatory Clint Eastwood quote here.

clint.jpg
 
I think the t and g is great for learning control of the plane and polish up take offs and landing but a landing and taxi back, when feasible, gives the student time to absorb what they did right or wrong... that’s a non cfi perspective... I recall my training well and I valued both depending on what I was learning...
 
Not sure why you think you would risk a departure stall!?
Because one upon a time I took off with the aircraft configured for landing. After stowing the gear I looked up and was going 60 mph. The dirty stall speed in my Mooney is 57.
 
Dangerous for some. Not for others. There is nothing special about the Mooney that makes it this impossible life-threatening task that you make it out to be. That being said...

Insert obligatory Clint Eastwood quote here.

A man's gotsta do what a man gotsta do??
 
I really can't see a situation where I'm wheels down and rolling and I need to put in the power. Perhaps landing in the evening at a rural airstrip where fauna could come in from the surroundings, but that really isn't my mission. If I've done my due diligence in the landing pattern I've looked over the landing surface and its safe to land. Moreover, there are lots of situations where staying on the ground could result in a pranged airplane, but trying to take off again could be far worse. I recall a TBM (you know the "M" stands for Mooney, right?) that had a prop strike after a bounce. He put the power in to do the go-around and died. Putting the power in can make an already bad situation that much dangerous. While I'm always prepared for a go around on short final, I prefer to focus my efforts on placing the airplane where I want it in the minimum distance.



This is outright nonsense. In my Cherokee you just put in the power and go. I do that in the Mooney and I'm courting a departure stall. I HAVE to swing the bar as soon as practicable, otherwise the forces involved quickly become overwhelming as the aircraft accelerates. So I'm trying to keep the nose down while doing that, fine. Add one more distraction into the mix, perhaps what caused me to bolt in the first place, and it gets honestly quite dangerous. Moreover, I have to pull out the flaps and re-trim the aircraft, things I never had to do in a trainer. Oh yeah, they have trim too, but aren't anywhere near as sensitive to it. So to do the T&G i have to re-trim and suck up the flaps. While rolling at relatively high energy on the ground. Sounds like a darn good way to break something.

And why do it? To add a skill that you aren't ever going to use if you do your due diligence? T&Gs don't teach you how to do go arounds, they teach you to do T&Gs. People have geared up airplanes doing T&Gs. People have died too.

I did a go around after landing a couple months ago. It was a gusty day (that's my story anyway and I'm sticking with it) and I bounced. If it's a little bounce I'll hold the nose up and land, with this one I ended up 4 feet off the runway, speed decaying in an expensive airplane with 45 hours on it. So I went around rather than slamming it in or worse. People should really be proficient and very comfortable with go arounds and touch and goes. No matter how good your approach is, there is always the possibility of a screw up where going around is your only option.

The trainer I learned on, a Beech skipper, had flaps that needed to be retracted and trim that needed to be adjusted on a touch and go or go around. The flaps were critical because the skipper wouldn't climb out of ground effect at full flaps. Trim you just deal with when you have time. I think touch and goes are very useful because they teach you how to configure and control the airplane in high work load times when things are happening quickly.
 
I did a go around after landing a couple months ago.
I've gone around after balked landings, thankfully not often. Still, it can get the best of us. Now I get to tell you how not putting the power in saved my life. I was flying my Mooney into a small(ish) airstrip for its annual inspection. That last time I flew into this airstrip it was 2300 feet, so that's what I thought I had to land. It was actually longer (about 3k feet), but prior experience trumped everything. Why check the length of a runway I've been to? Who lengthens runways? These guys did.

Coming in over the trees I pulled all the power and put it in a forward slip. Straightened out over the runway, flared, and BLAM!, hardest bounce I've ever seen. Unbeknownst to me I'd struck the prop in that bounce. Normally, I'd just put in the power and fly out of a bounce like that. But I was relatively new to the Mooney, didn't feel confident in my abilities with it, and had already decided that once the wheels hit the ground they were staying there. That decision saved my life that day.

Had I put in the power I would have been putting it into an asymmetrically bend prop and an engine with a busted crank shaft. There were tall trees just off the end of that runway, I doubt things would have ended very well. As it was I bounced down the runway, taxied back, saw what I'd done and just about gave up flying.

Yeah, if a landing goes that badly I just put in the power and go. Yeah, she pitches up hard. Yeah, I have to use the Mooney dip to seat the gear. Yeah, its eventful. And I can do all that without repeated T&G's. But sometimes it can be better to just ride it out.
 
Because one upon a time I took off with the aircraft configured for landing. After stowing the gear I looked up and was going 60 mph. The dirty stall speed in my Mooney is 57.
So you ****ed up. I get it. Been there done that and have the t shirt. BTW the touch and go was not your error.

If you always manage risk the way you are in this scenario, you will eventually stop flying.
 
I've gone around after balked landings, thankfully not often. Still, it can get the best of us. Now I get to tell you how not putting the power in saved my life. I was flying my Mooney into a small(ish) airstrip for its annual inspection. That last time I flew into this airstrip it was 2300 feet, so that's what I thought I had to land. It was actually longer (about 3k feet), but prior experience trumped everything. Why check the length of a runway I've been to? Who lengthens runways? These guys did.

Coming in over the trees I pulled all the power and put it in a forward slip. Straightened out over the runway, flared, and BLAM!, hardest bounce I've ever seen. Unbeknownst to me I'd struck the prop in that bounce. Normally, I'd just put in the power and fly out of a bounce like that. But I was relatively new to the Mooney, didn't feel confident in my abilities with it, and had already decided that once the wheels hit the ground they were staying there. That decision saved my life that day.

Had I put in the power I would have been putting it into an asymmetrically bend prop and an engine with a busted crank shaft. There were tall trees just off the end of that runway, I doubt things would have ended very well. As it was I bounced down the runway, taxied back, saw what I'd done and just about gave up flying.

Yeah, if a landing goes that badly I just put in the power and go. Yeah, she pitches up hard. Yeah, I have to use the Mooney dip to seat the gear. Yeah, its eventful. And I can do all that without repeated T&G's. But sometimes it can be better to just ride it out.

That was a blam, mine was more of a blip, it was pretty soft. If I hit that hard I would probably just put it down, because the damage is done. If I hadn't gone around I'm not sure what would have happened, I probably would have put a little power in and settled back down, but it was a blown landing, I was going 70 knots and it was very gusty. But it was a big bounce for me and going around cost me 4 or 5 more minutes of flight time. I greased the second landing.

I've said this before, I'll say it again. I've promised myself that if I feel uncomfortable in any aspect of my flying, I will get a CFI and do that which makes me uncomfortable until I know I'm proficient at it. We shouldn't be afraid of these machines.
 
I've said this before, I'll say it again. I've promised myself that if I feel uncomfortable in any aspect of my flying, I will get a CFI and do that which makes me uncomfortable until I know I'm proficient at it. We shouldn't be afraid of these machines.
I spent a fair amount of time afterwards with a CFI. I no longer have the "if the wheels touch down they stay down" dictum, but I'm not spring loaded for the T&G like some folks here. Like I said, there are situations where it's best to ride it out. I seem to be a good enough pilot that I can fly out of a balked landing without doing repeated T&G's. I wish I would have been a good enough pilot to avoid that prop strike. Came perilously close to ending my flying for good.
 
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